Recently, homeowners have increasingly used natural materials such as granite or other stone materials for countertops in domestic kitchens. Such natural materials have advantages in durability, stain resistance and beauty over man-made surfaces. However, these materials suffer from the disadvantage that they are heavy and difficult to manipulate. The substantial weight of these materials renders them both difficult to fabricate and difficult to install.
Typically a stone supplier fabricates stone slabs by cutting the desired shape from raw pieces, and then polishing the cut piece to the designer's specification. The step of polishing the cut stone can be difficult to accomplish, as the edges are best accessed when the stone slab is set vertically on edge, so that the top edge is positioned to permit polishing. Not only is this vertical positioning difficult to achieve, but it is also difficult to reliably maintain. If the slab is not well balanced on edge or not held securely, there is a substantial risk that the slab will fall over and likely break upon impact.
Installation of stone countertops is also difficult, again due to their great weight. A particularly difficult procedure is the installation of an undermount sink beneath a countertop, which requires the undermount sink to be held in place beneath the countertop while mountings are installed in the underside of the countertop. The undermount sink is typically heavy and therefore difficult to hold in place underneath the countertop while mountings are being installed. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that often there is only room for one person to reach into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, and thus one person must simultaneously hold the sink in place and fasten mountings thereto.